Wellington-based angel investment group Angel HQ and New Zealand Venture Investment Fund (NZVIF) have joined forces to invest $8 million in start-up companies.
NZVIF will match any investments made by Angel HQ at an even 1:1 rate, increasing the capital available for a start-up's growth.
Angel HQ is an established angel investment group with around 30 investors in a variety of start-up companies mainly in the Wellington region, with current investments including Green Button and Kiwi Semiconductor.
With a proposed $4 million investment put forward by Angel HQ, NZVIF has committed to investing up to an additional $4 million through the partnership bringing the total merged investment up to $8 million.
Angel HQ chairman Bruno Bordignon said the partnership with NZVIF would bring additional investment into potentially innovative companies based in Welington.
“We want to build on this [opportunity], which is why Angel HQ earlier this year formed linkages with Victoria University’s commercialisation agency, VicLink, the business incubator, Creative HQ, and Industrial Research Limited, to help drive deal flow.”
The partnership is expected to run for 4-5 years, investing in around 15 to 20 young companies.
Chief executive of NZVIF Franceska Banga said that Wellington is seeing significant activity in the building and development of younger companies.
“Angel HQ is the second angel group we’ve partnered with in Wellington in the last year, including the investment made with MOVAC’s new venture capital fund launched in July.
“These partnerships are giving a boost to the amount of ready capital able to be deployed into investing into young businesses. Since NZVIF began collecting data in 2006, angel investors have invested over $200 million into young technology companies.”
To date, NZVIF and its angel partners have co-invested over $51 million into 69 companies, with the current partnership with Angel HQ being their fourteenth through its Seed Co-Investment Fund.
Robert McCambridge
Mon, 05 Dec 2011
